This last week for my Children’s Literature course, we read Treasure Island. This is a book I have loved for a long time — the character of Old Pew was a major influence on Peter Nimble.

Recently, I had students watch a lecture by Mike Hill about the subtextual themes of Jurassic Park. Hill does a great job explaining how great stories contain a primal/Jungian undercurrent that runs beneath the surface plot — in the case of JP it was about the anxiety of creating a family.

The lecture paid off nicely while discussing Treasure Island this week. When we look at Jim Hawkins’ journey through Hill’s lens, it becomes clear that Treasure Island is the story of a boy who has lost his father and refuses to accept that reality. And so he searches for replacement father figures, all of whom disappoint him in different ways until he can finally accept the truth: he is no longer a child.

I have long thought that the true climax of Treasure Island comes not when they find the treasure, but in a scene right before that, where Jim defies the advice of the morally-upright Dr. Livesey to break his promise to Long John Silver and escape:

“Jim,” the doctor interrupted, and his voice was quite changed, “Jim, I can’t have this. Whip over, and we’ll run for it.”

“Doctor,” said I, “I passed my word.”

“I know, I know,” he cried. “We can’t help that, Jim, now. I’ll take it on my shoulders, holus bolus, blame and shame, my boy; but stay here, I cannot let you. Jump! One jump, and you’re out, and we’ll run for it like antelopes.”

“No,” I replied; “you know right well you wouldn’t do the thing yourself–neither you nor squire nor captain; and no more will I. Silver trusted me; I passed my word, and back I go.”

This is the defining test of Jim’s character — a moment where he places the integrity of his word as an English Gentleman over even his life.

It calls to mind the values of the age so well captured in Kipling’s poem “If …?”, another text we read for this class. A daunting list to be sure, but one I think this book strives for:

For those interested, you can see the Hill lecture pasted below. It’s worth checking out!

Earlier this year, I took a break from my own novels to play in someone else’s sandbox: The Burning Tide is the heartstopping conclusion to the blockbuster Spirit Animals series.

These books are all written by different authors–including names like Shanon Hale, Garth Nix, Brandon Mull, and Marie Lu. Fans of the books are also encouraged to log onto Scholastic’s site, where there’s a pretty impressive video-game world that fills out the experience. Click here to read an excerpt of the first three chapters. It was great diving into the world of Spirit Animals … hope you enjoy!

When I teach my Children’s Literature course, I always start with a lecture on the “Golden Age” of children’s literature–starting with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and ending (to my thinking) with Peter & Wendy. I wrap up the lecture by identifying six Golden Age children’s authors who set the template for what the genre would become in the century to follow. On the list is L Frank Baum, who I credit with creating something that has perhaps had the greatest impact on contemporary storytelling: platform worldbuilding.

The 1939 movie has made such a cultural impact that it’s hard to remember the Oz books for what they really are. Baum’s books weren’t just about Dorothy and Toto. There were dozens of Oz stories containing hundreds of characters. The books continued even after his death. Baum himself wrote 18. They were published around the holidays and it was a tradition among children to get the new Oz book for Christmas. He wasn’t just telling a single story, Baum was building a WORLD.

Storytelling utilizes three main tools: character, setting, and action. At various points in history, popular stories have emphasized one or another of these elements. Presently, we are entering an age that celebrates setting above all. Today we value not just compelling narratives (Shakespeare) or characters (Dickens), but settings rich enough to contain a multitude of characters and plots. Think of visionaries like Tolkien, Gygax, Lucas, Roddenberry, Jack Kirby — their legacies are not single narratives so much as entire universes. Part of the reason this brand of storytelling has ascended is because it allows the creation of franchises–which are very valuable. Another bigger reason is because it fits more seamlessly into interactive storytelling (video games); what is World of Warcraft if not an ever-expanding narrative landscape?

One might argue that Scott or Homer worked within this tradition, but I think the real innovator was Baum. In Oz, Baum created a place that could contain infinite stories … which was a pretty radical concept at the time. So the next time you see yet another Star Wars movie in the cineplex, or yet another version of Zelda at Gamestop, thank Baum. or curse him.

Every fall I teach a class at Hogwarts Chatham University’s MFA program. It’s a great opportunity to spend time with young writers and talk about children’s literature! This year, I’m shaking up my standard reading list, and I thought I’d share it for those who want to play at home:

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by JK Rowling

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Peter & Wendy by JM Barrie

Magic Marks the Spot by Caroline Carlson

The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman

Charlotte’s Web by EB White

The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

A Monster Calls (movie) dir. JA Bayona

Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis

Crenshaw by Katherine Applegate

The Secrets of Story by Matt Bird

A lot of thought goes into the selection of a reading list. Even the best books can get stale over time, and it’s important to strike a balance between books that teach well (Peter Pan, Charlotte’s Web) and books that excite me (A Monster Calls, Crenshaw). This year, I decided to multitask and include a number of books that tie into my own current work in progress … which is to say that there are CLUES about my next novel buried in this list!

So … I have another book coming out this year! It’s an installment in the juggernaut Spirit Animals series, created by Brandon Mull. It’s a fantasy series about a band of kids who each have magical animal companions. It was really fun taking a break from my own characters to spend a little time in another author’s world–I even got to kill off a main character! (True story: freedom to kill a character was a requirement for my taking the job.) Here’s a summary from the astonishingly comprehensive Spirit Animals fan wiki, which I used quite a bit while writing the book:

Long before humans walked the land, it came to Erdas. Wicked, patient, and hungry, it has slept beneath the surface of the world. Now the Wyrm is awakening.

Conor, Abeke, Meilin, and Rollan are four heroes who are split between worlds, braving separate paths in order to stop this evil. With a strange and unlikely new group of allies behind them, the young guardians have a real chance at saving their home—but they will have to move fast.

An ancient trap exists, hidden within the folds of Erdas itself. Though it has the power to end this war for good, the means of starting the trap have been lost. The young heroes only have one shot. They must work with their spirit animals to uncover a secret older than time. If they can’t, then everything will be consumed.

This book has been without question the most difficult challenge of my career. Two years is a lot of time for most writers, but for me it was a sprint that very nearly broke me. More than a few times, I considered abandoning the book altogether. But every time I got to that point, I thought of Sophie — mending books in a city that no longer read stories — and I knew I had to finish.

Sophie Quire is technically a companion to my first novel, Peter Nimble & his Fantastic Eyes — but it is also a standalone story with a different hero set in a different world. The combined books are in many ways an examination of what it means to live in a world that has lost its sense of enchantment. Peter Nimble and Sir Tode are a major part of the story … but it is not their story. The tone is darker and the stakes are much higher. Also, it has way more monsters! The book will come out Spring 2016.

Children’s literature maven Monica Edinger recently wrote a thoughtful response to a recent Slate piece on the “epidemic of niceness” that plagues the modern publishing industry.1 Both writers voice their frustration over the dearth of negative book reviews online.2 Here’s an excerpt from the original article:

“But if you spend time in the literary Twitter- or blogospheres, you’ll be positively besieged by amiability, by a relentless enthusiasm that might have you believing that all new books are wonderful and that every writer is every other writer’s biggest fan. It’s not only shallow, it’s untrue, and it’s having a chilling effect on literary culture, creating an environment where writers are vaunted for their personal biographies or their online followings rather than for their work on the page.” Jacob Silverman, Slate

For me, reading is too often an experience of discovering that the emperor has no clothes. When that happens, I feel betrayed by my community (Somebody should have warned me!). And yet, when I read an openly negative book review, it turns me off. While I agree to the importance of quality criticism, quality criticism is no fun.3

There is, however, one safe place where negative reviews thrive: the celebrated book

While I bite my tongue about contemporary books I dislike, I am more than comfortable speaking out against boring old books. I am not alone here; the internet is awash in snarky takedowns of overrated classics. For more contemporary targets, one only need look at the upper echelons. For every hundred glowing reviews of Freedom, you can be sure there will be a BR Meyer review attacking it.

Sometimes these dissenting voices come off as prophets, other times they come off as attention-hungry trolls (Armond White, anyone?). I think there is a sense that a successful work can afford to be taken down a few notches. Perhaps this is true, but since when has that been the purpose of criticism?

In Edinger’s comments, she mentions that SLJ’s Heavy Medal blog stands out as a place where honest criticism is alive and well. I agree with her, and I think the blog gets away with that because of its conceit: any book mentioned there is already a contender for the Newbery. There is no such thing as a bad book on that blog, only varying levels of good.

I think the success of Heavy Medal speaks to a larger point. Perhaps the reason bad books do not get panned is because we subconsciously know they are undeserving of critical engagement? And perhaps this is the way it should be? What is the value of our greatest literary minds attacking Fifty Shades of Grey, a book that has no literary aspirations?

Let us save our very best criticism for our very best books — because those are the books whose flaws are worth discussing, and those are the authors who we want to see grow.

I’m a fan of the science-fiction blog Io9. A few weeks ago, they posted a pretty nifty piece of forgotten versions of famous movies. Among the list were several children’s literature adaptations, all of which are free watch on YouTube. (Hooray for the public domain!) Highlights include silent versions of Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan as well as a saxiphone-laced Finnish adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. Click any of the below images to read the whole list:

I’ve recently been reading a lot of short stories by Edwardian master Saki (the pen name of HH Munro). The stories are largely wonderful — a combination of funny and macabre that I haven’t seen since Roald Dahl. Speaking of Dahl, he was a huge fan of Saki. Here’s his blurb on the back of the Complete Works:

“In all literature, he was the first to employ successfully a wildly outrageous premise in order to make a serious point. I love that. And today the best of his stories are still better than the best of just about every other writer around.” – Roald Dahl on Saki

Why is this interesting? Well, I have recently been thinking about Betsy Bird’s SLJ poll of the top 100 children’s books — in her piece on Matilda, Betsy mentions a rumor that the character of Matilda was originally conceived to be “a nasty little girl, somewhat in the same vein of Belloc’s Matilda Who Told Lies and Was Burned to Death. Revision after revision turned her instead into the sweet little thing we all know and love today.”

This seems like a good comparison, but for the fact that Belloc’s Matilda is not terribly smart.1 So imagine my surprise and delight when a few weeks ago, while reading Saki’s short story “The Boar-Pig“, I encounter a shrewd little girl named Matilda Cuvering whose sole mission in life is to terrorize stupid adults. In the story, Matilda humiliates and extorts a pair of social climbers trying to crash a garden party. And she doesn’t limit her wrath to adults:

“I was told to imitate Claude, that’s my young cousin, who never does anything wrong … It seems [My aunts] thought I ate too much raspberry trifle at lunch, and they said Claude never eats too much raspberry trifle. Well, Claude always goes to sleep for half an hour after lunch, because he’s told to, and I waited till he was asleep, and tied his hands and started forcible feeding with a whole bucketful of raspberry trifle … Lots of it went on to his sailor-suit and some of it on to the bed, but a good deal went down Claude’s throat, and they can’t say again that he has never been known to eat too much raspberry trifle.”

Of course, we’ll never know for certain whether Dahl had this character in mind when he created Matilda Wormwood, but I can’t help but wonder.2

Ever asked yourself why science-fiction came about in the 19th century? Recently I listened to a series of interviews that Bill Moyers conducted with science-fiction wizard Isaac Asimov.1 Asimov gave a description of the origins of science fiction that really grabbed me:

“The fact is that society is always changing, but the rate of change has been accelerating all through history for a variety of reasons. … It was only with the coming of the industrial revolution that the rate of change became fast enough to be visible in a single lifetime. So people became aware that not only were things changing, but they would continue to change after they died. And that was when science fiction came into being (as opposed to fantasy and adventure tales) because people knew that they would die before they could see the changes that would happen in the next century so it would be nice to imagine what they might be.”

Sounds pretty dead-on, if you ask me. If you want to watch the whole interview, click the link below:

Asimov Fun Fact: he is one of the only authors in history who has published books under all ten major headings of the Dewey Decimal system! ↩